“Get a couple more chairs,” Bill told the waiter. He remained standing as Pete and the blonde came toward the table. Pete Crane was a newspaper reporter who had drifted into St. Augustine a year before in a convalescent state after a severe attack of delirium tremens.
After chasing news all over the world, Pete decided St. Augustine suited him. Aside from periodical drunks, he was the perfect reporter. Slovenly and loose-limbed, genial and optimistic, he and Bill had understood each other after the first hand-clasp.
He grinned now as he slouched up to the table and presented his companion with a flourish:
“This is Blanche,” he told Bill. “Bill Porter, my slave-driving City Editor,” he explained to Blanche.
She was tall and slender. Of indeterminate age. Bill guessed she wasn’t more than twenty-five. Her hair was exquisite, soft waves of deep gold sculptured to perfect precision atop her head. Her forehead was wide and beautiful, her eyes lustrous, her lips full and smiling.
She held out a beautifully manicured hand to Bill which he seized eagerly. “This is certainly a pleasure,” she murmured in a delightfully low voice. “Pete has been singing your praises.”
“Where did Pete find you?” Bill demanded.
Blanche smiled faintly. “I found him,” she admitted and grinned suddenly at the others.
Then Bill was suddenly conscious of the others at the table. He continued to hold Blanche’s hand as he introduced them to her:
“This is Nip and Tuck,” he said. “And Mr. Pennel.”
Blanche frowned a moment, then smiled. “Nip and Tuck?” she exclaimed. “Of course. How stupid of me not to remember! And isn’t it delightful that you’re still called by those clever nicknames? Still the inseparable pair of madcaps, I suppose.” Her pleasure seemed genuine. The younger girls were completely fascinated by her.
“I remember you,” Nip said. “You’re Blanche Nolan. When did you come back?”
“Just yesterday,” Blanche said. “Straight from Reno to St. Augustine. And that’s quite a hop … if you know what I mean.” She seated herself. Bill noted that she had not glanced at Lee Pennel.
“Reno?” Tuck was awed. “We’re still Nip and Tuck, and we’ve never been away from St. Augustine,” she said.
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” Blanche told her. “You have each other, and that’s more than most of us can say. Let’s drink to the lucky twins.” She held her glass aloft.
“But we’re not twins,” Nip protested. “I was first by half an hour. Dad won a hundred dollars from Mr. Tucker when I popped out first.”
“That must have been one of the most exciting races ever staged in southern Florida,” Pete observed. He lifted his glass and touched Blanche’s. “Shall we drink to Nip and Tuck?”
“That’s not fair,” Tuck protested. “Mrs. Post says it’s not etiquette to drink one’s own toast. That leaves us on the water wagon.”
“Exactly where you belong,” Bill assured her.
“Is that so?” Nip made a face at him as the others emptied their highball glasses. “Come on, Tuck. We’ll drink a toast of our own. You know? The one that Beth told us the other night.”
“Oh yeh. Come on.” They stood up together and held their glasses high as they solemnly intoned:
“Here’s to the maid who’s not afraid
To learn the facts of life.
To hell with the one who sits in the sun
And waits to be taken to wife.”
“Atagirl,” Lee applauded as they drained the glasses.
Tuck smiled warmly at him and tugged at his arm. “That’s a hot number they’re playing,” she said. “Let’s do our stuff to that.”
“Oke.” Lee leaped to his feet and followed. “I arranged that myself,” he boasted. “Does make you want to pick ’em up and lay ’em down, doesn’t it?”
“Whew!” Pete fanned the air before his nose as Lee and Tuck stepped on to the dance floor. “That guy stinks,” he complained. “Whyn’t he go back to the sewer where he belongs?”
“That’s Tuck’s latest heart throb,” Bill told him. “She’s just cra-a-azy about him.”
“All the girls are crazy about him,” Nip said. She poured herself another drink of pseudo Scotch and drank it straight. Bill ignored her. He turned to speak to Blanche, but Pete quickly intervened.
“You’re conducting the kindergarten tonight,” he growled. “Let’s dance,” he said to Blanche.
She smiled at Bill as she shrugged her shoulders and got up with Pete. Her smile seemed to promise something which set his pulse to a faster tempo. He turned to watch them as they danced away.
“Come out of the ether,” Nip said. “She’s shop-worn. Here am I … all fresh. Done up in cellophane. Allathrob and aflame for you.”
Her hand clawed at his shoulder, and Bill turned back to her resignedly. “You’re going to take an awful lot of looking out for,” he said sadly.
“You like me though, don’t you?” She leaned her elbows on the table and peered at him between her outspread fingers.
“You’re a good kid,” Bill told her. “Sure I like you. But I’d like you lots better if you’d drop that pose of sophistication and be your own sweet self.”
She leaned forward on the table and caught his head between her hands. “I’m eighteen,” she said. “Kiss me.”
Her face was very close to Bill’s. He gazed deep into her eyes for a moment without replying. Her lips were pouting … inviting.
The electrician chose that moment to turn out all the lights in the room.
There was something about the sudden darkness …
Something about the brooding questioning which had leapt from Nip’s eyes.
Bill let his face be drawin forward. This was the first time he had allowed himself to kiss Nip. He had laughed at her on each of the other three occasions they had been out together.
Her lips were full and warm. But it was a very unsatisfactory position for a kiss. Bill had theories about kisses. He hadn’t intended transmitting any of them to Nip … but he forgot she was so young when the lights went out.
Somehow they were standing together, without breaking the contact between their lips. Bill’s arm was behind her back and his left hand slipped expertly up and down the middle of her back.
Then the lights came on, and Bill remembered all his good resolves. He pushed Nip back roughly and dropped into a chair. “And that,” he said heavily, “is how the lustful male kisses.”
Nip was trembling. He was surprised to see tears on her lashes as she sat down. “Oh God,” she said. “Why won’t you let me be grown up?”
Bill didn’t know whether she was addressing the question to him or to God. Under the circumstances he thought it best to disregard the invocation.
“Now you know,” he said after a short silence.
“Know what?” Nip looked at him in surprise.
“You know why I don’t want to kiss you.”
“Didn’t you like the sample?” Nip looked at him.
“Too damned much,” he averred.
“So what?” She tilted her head on one side and considered him gravely.
“You know exactly what I mean,” he told her. “Ten years ago I made a resolution that I’d never again make myself responsible for teaching a young girl how swell passion can be.”
“Why?” she asked him wide-eyed.
“Because my pupil on that occasion was entirely too apt,” he granted. “Because she passed on her way and went on down into hell while I had to stand by helpless to stop it. Because I cursed myself ever after for giving her that first push downward. Now you know.”
He poured himself a stiff drink of the liquor which Lee had provided, and was silent.
Nip leaned forward with shining eyes. “I won’t be like that,” she promised. “And I’m not going to let you keep on tantalizing me like this.”
“That’s right,” Pete said. Nip and Bill looked up in surprise to see that Pete and Blanche had app
roached the table during the interim.
“Is he holding out on you?” Blanche asked.
“Yes,” Nip told her. “He wants to put me to bed with a bottle and forget it.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Pete said as they sat down. “What price crowded dance floors on a night like this? Do you realize there’s a moon upon the mystic heights? She casts her pearly effulgence down upon a rickety bungalow I know. Let us thither and grasp the message from the wan maiden of the night.”
“He’s in a bad way,” Bill said. “How many did he have before he came over here?” he asked Blanche.
“Three Bacardi highballs in rapid succession,” she said.
“Strange,” Bill said, “I didn’t think that would send him into the poetic stage.”
“What I’m suggesting,” Pete said. “Is a house-warming. Has Bill told you he acquired a domicile today?”
“No,” Nip said. “Where?”
“An old, dilapidated dump out on the shore of the bay,” Bill said indulgently. “It’s in awful shape. I collected a bunch of second-hand junk this afternoon and tossed it in. But I don’t want to be inhospitable. You’re perfectly welcome if you can endure the mess it’s in.”
“Sure,” Pete said. “There aren’t any neighbors within three miles. We can make the welkin ring and no irate landlord will interfere. I vote we adjourn to the cottage on the bay.”
“But what about Tuck?” Nip objected. “She won’t want to go without Lee. And he has to stay till midnight or after.”
“Why not let them come along later?” Blanche suggested. She smiled at Bill eagerly. Jestingly, perhaps. But Bill did not translate it as such. He wondered whether Pete would really be sore if Blanche ditched him.
“Nothing doing,” Nip said. “I’ll stick around till she can come.”
“Tell you what,” Pete said. “Suppose you let me have the key, Bill? Blanche and I’ll run out and get some cocktails mixed while we wait for you. I helped you cache the liquor this afternoon.”
Bill searched about for an answer while Blanche’s eyes mutely implored him not to leave her alone with Pete. It was very strange, Bill thought, to consider that he and Blanche had met only a few minutes previously, yet such perfect understanding could exist between them.
“I’m afraid you’ll get lost on the way out,” he told Pete. “Here comes Tuck and Lee now. Let’s put the proposition up to them. Perhaps they’ll have an answer.”
“We’re dying for a drink,” Nip exclaimed as she came up to the table on Lee’s arm.
“We’re just trying to figure on a way to turn this into a real party,” Nip said. “Bill has rented a cottage out on the bay where there aren’t any neighbors for three miles. He’s invited us all out for a house-warming. Pete said something about a moon and a cache of liquor. You two come on.”
“Why … I don’t believe I can,” Lee said.
“Please.” Tuck clung to him. “This will be a swell gang for an all night party.” Her eyes were starry.
“By God! I’ll do it,” he exclaimed. “Excuse me a moment while I make arrangements for the music to go on without me.”
Bill bit his lip as he stared after Lee Pennel. Decidedly, the fellow would need looking after. It was going to be rather difficult, he foresaw, to continue his chaperonage of Tuck if she continued to look at the bounder like that.
But it was hard to resist the atmosphere of gaiety which came from the other five as they streamed from the door of the roadhouse a few minutes later. Pete and Blanche had come in a taxi, so they all piled into the red automobile to drive to the cottage on the bay.
It was a beautiful drive. Nip sat quietly beside Bill and rested her head on his shoulder. An impossibly golden moon rode low on the eastern horizon. The winding road was tree-shadowed, streamers of Spanish moss casting fantastic patterns upon the roadway.
Then Bill swung into a long disused driveway and the headlights played upon a one-story bungalow set amidst a sea of tropical shrubbery. He halted the car with the bumper almost touching the threshold. The three couples piled out into the path laughingly, and Bill fumbled in his pocket for the key.
CHAPTER FIVE
A GAME OF POKER
“Don’t expect electric lights,” Bill warned them as he opened the front door. “The shack’s never been wired. I’ve got a kerosene lamp here some place,” he went on as he struck a match and advanced into the room, “and I bought a dozen candles this afternoon.”
“Swell,” Lee said. “Dim lights and dark corners. Candles are plenty good.”
“I’ll say,” Nip chimed in. “Are they big candles?”
They all laughed immoderately as Bill lit the old-fashioned lamp on the center table.
“You’re a bunch of dirty-minded hoodlums,” Nip told them. “I didn’t mean it that way at all.”
“Look out,” Lee jeered. “You’ll get mixed up and really say something in a minute.”
“Well, you couldn’t blame me much if I did mean it,” Nip declared. “The way Bill keeps on babying me … I may be reduced to something like that before the night’s over.”
“Here they are,” Bill said as he turned from rummaging on the mantle. “I’m not worried about this competition,” he chuckled, holding up a packet of thin tapers. “But Mr. Pennel may be jealous.”
All except Lee laughed at Bill’s innuendo, and they all trooped about the cottage, leaving a candle burning in each of the five rooms. Everything was in the most complete disorder imaginable. The entire house had been scrubbed that day, and a load of second-hand furniture had been strewn about indiscriminately.
“Now that the mansion is lit up,” Pete said when they all gathered in the living room again, “what say we do something along the same lines for ourselves?”
“All right,” Bill said. “Who wants to do down into the cellar with me to bring out the liquor?”
Nip and Blanche started toward him simultaneously.
“I’ll go,” Nip said.
“Let’s all go,” Blanche amended.
“Suppose you all go on?” Lee suggested. “Tuck and I’ll wait here for you.” He pushed a suitcase and a bunch of coat-hangers off an old couch and motioned for Tuck to sit there with him.
Pete grinned at Bill and winked at him secretly. He detested Lee Pennel just as thoroughly as Bill did, and he felt the same urge to protect Tuck from herself.
“Suppose we make it three and three?” he said. “You three go on and be careful not to frighten the lizards in the cellar.”
“Lizards?” Nip asked as she and Blanche went with Bill to the kitchen where he lifted a trap door in the center of the room.
“Big ones,” Bill told her.
“It’s awfully dark down there,” Nip said.
“We can’t take a light down,” Bill said hastily. “A light would frighten the rats so there’s no telling what they’d do. I’ve heard a rat reacts to a light like a bull to a red flag.”
“How interesting,” Blanche said. She stood close to Bill’s side and peered downward into the black hole beneath the floor.
“One of you stay up here and hold a light in the opening,” Bill said, “while the other one goes to the foot of the ladder to bring back a couple of bottles.”
“Rats?” Nip said. She reached for the candle quickly. “I’ll hold the candle if you want to go,” she said to Blanche.
Blanche shivered and pretended to hesitate as Bill slipped down through the hole. “All right,” she said. “But don’t hold the candle too near the trap door. I don’t know much about rats, but I don’t want them charging up the ladder with me. Let’s not disturb them.”
Bill stopped at the foot of the ladder and looked up with madly beating heart as a form started to descend. Instinctively, he knew it was Blanche. He didn’t stop to analyze the thing that was happening to him. The wonderful part was that he and Blanche seemed to be in perfect accord. Bill knew that such things did happen on rare occasions. But it had never happened to him before.
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He held out his arms and let her slide into them as she reached the foot of the ladder. Blanche turned and her soft arms were about his neck. Her lips were burning, insatiable. No words, simply a vibrant communion of body and soul bursting into splendid flame together.
“Over here,” Bill said. Her eyes glowed in the darkness like two opals. She moved silently with him to a pile of canvas bags, and sank down upon them.
Bill kicked a bottle and hoped that Nip wouldn’t become impatient.
She didn’t have time to become impatient. She crouched on the floor and held the candle outstretched. She could hear little movements from below, and faint whispers. Exclamations, and the clink of bottles. She hoped that the rats wouldn’t really attack them.
Then she was relieved to hear them moving about directly below the trap door, and to hear Bill’s hearty voice:
“That’s Bacardi and port, I think. I’ve got Scotch and gin. Up with you before those rats recover from their surprise and come at us, hell-bent for leather.”
Blanche was flushed and smiling as she appeared in the dim circle of light. A soft radiance seemed to envelop her. Nip thought she was exceedingly beautiful.
“You certainly are brave,” she murmured. “I wouldn’t have gone down there for anything.”
“It wasn’t bad,” Blanche told her. “Bill is a very good protector.” She set her bottles on the table as Bill came through the hole laboriously. His face was white and strained.
“Close the trap door while I get out some ice,” he told Nip.
An old-fashioned ice-box yielded a cake of ice which Bill chipped with a rusty pick.
“Does your plumbing work?” Blanche asked him.
“Yeh,” Bill muttered. “I had it fixed yesterday. First door on your right.”
Nip moved beside him and set the candle on the table. “Where are the glasses?”
There in the cupboard,” Bill grunted. “I haven’t anything to mix this with. We’ll fix a pitcher of ice and six glasses. Open up all the bottles and take your choice. And I hope you’ll stick to port,” he told Nip.
“Will you?” she asked him.
“Certainly not,” Bill told her. “Port’s no fit drink for a strong man.”
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